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MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



BY 



HON. PHILANDER C. KNOX 



ON THE 



BATTLEFIELD 
OF GETTYSBURG 



MAY 30, 1908. 



/ <3 



am 
Author 

to Mr'09 



,5-3 



My Friends and 

Fellow Citizens of the Republic: 

In the last days of June, 1863, the 
Confederate forces, raiding on the North and 
East and advancing from the West, were 
recalled arid concentrated towards this spot 
under the pressure of the Union forces com- 
ing up from the South. On the afternoon 
of June 30th, the weary and dusty troopers 
of Buford's vanguard rode through the village 
and threw out their picket lines in readiness 
to touch the advance from the West of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. 

On the morning of July 1st, at nine 
o'clock, an officer of another staff came 
clattering up to Buford and was sharply 
questioned and , ordered to return immedi- 
ately to his command. Just as he pro- 
tested — "Why, what's the matter. General?" 



— the far-off sound of a single cannon shot 
was heard, Buford's signal to his skirmishers 
to open on the enemy, and Buford said, 
" That's the matter P^ The battle of Get- 
tysburg had begun. At the close of that 
pitiless and terrible July day, the Union 
forces, repulsed but not beaten, fell back 
to Cemetery Ridge, and the brave antag- 
onists waited for the morrow and fought, 
and again waited for the morrow and 
fought with the result that all the world 
knows. 

Let us leave the battle now, leave the 
recital of its details of valor to the tongues 
of those whose proud memories of their past 
achievements qualify and entitle them to 
speak. Let us rather seek to find the real 
reason for Gettysburg; discover, if possible, 
its fundamental cause; find what indeed 
was the matter; why it was necessary that 

Gettysburg should be; what law had the 

4 



aj 



American people broken that they should 
receive this baptism of fraternal blood and 
how such crises in National life are to be 
averted. 

We know^ that the lavs^s of the mate- 
rial universe, if observed, so govern and 
control matter that it continues to develop 
until it results in perfection of form and 
strength, but if those lavv^s are disturbed de- 
struction follows: 

We also know that in the spiritual 
world the laws promulgated by the Cre- 
ator, which are to govern men in this 
world, if observed by man, either con- 
sciously or unconsciously, make him to 
grow in spirit and in righteousness. 

So it is with the nations of the earth. 
They are subject to ethical laws, the ob- 
servance of which means life for the na- 
tion, and the rejection of which means 
death. 

5 



As in the natural world there is con- 
tinual war between the evoluting forces of 
nature and the opposed forces of dissolu- 
tion, and as in the spiritual world there is 
continually strife between the spiritual laws 
and the forces of evil, so there is in the 
history of every nation this continual strife 
and war, which ultimately must reach a 
crisis where, face to face, good and evil, 
justice and injustice must fight until either 
the right prevails or evil survives. 

Nations have passed through such crises 
and have survived or perished, just as moral 
laws have prevailed or been overthrown. 

Sometimes men are conscious of the 

real nature of the struggle in which they 

are engaged. They realize just what 

forces are contending. They appreciate the 

exact issue involved, follow the causal 

sequence of events and can foresee the 

nature and effect of the result. At other 

6 



times, "God moving in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform," hides from the 
mind and vision of men a real apprehen- 
sion of the causes and consequences of 
their most vital acts. 

"Man proposes, but God disposes," and 
His dispositions are controlled by His own 
immutable and inexorable laws and in- 
scrutable purposes. 

Speaking of Napoleon and Waterloo, 
Victor Hugo says: 

"Was it possible that Napoleon 
should win this battle? We answer 
— no! Why? Because of Welling- 
ton? Because of Blucher? No! 
Because of God. 

"For Bonaparte to be conqueror 
at Waterloo was not in the law of 
the nineteenth century. Another series 
of facts were preparing in which Na- 

7 



poleon had no place. The ill will of 
events had long been announced. 

"It was time that this vast man 
should fall. 

"The excessive weight of this man 
in human destiny disturbed the equi- 
librium. This individual counted of 
himself alone more than the universe 
besides. These plethoras of all hu- 
man vitality concentrated in a single 
head, the world mounting to the brain 
of one man would be fatal to civiliza- 
tion if they should endure. The mo- 
ment had come for incorruptible su- 
preme equity to look to it. Probably 
the principles and elements upon which 
regular gravitations in the moral order 
as well as in the material depend, be- 
gan to murmur. Reeking blood, over- 
crowded cemeteries, weeping mothers 
— these are formidable pleaders. When 

8 



the earth is suffering from a surcharge 
there are mysterious moanings from 
the deeps which the heavens hear. 

"Napoleon had been impeached 
before the Infinite and his fall was 
decreed. 

"He vexed God. 

"Waterloo is not a battle; it is 
the change of front of the universe." 

And so at the battle of Waterloo, 
Napoleon on the one side in opposition to 
the incorruptible and supreme equity must 
go down before the great ethical law, 
which destroyed him because by his ambi- 
tion and his power he was disturbing the 
equilibrium of the moral world. Napoleon 
and the despotic empire were crushed to 
liberalize monarchy and to establish consri- 
tutional order through the counter-revolution 
which followed Waterloo. 

9 



Just such a crisis forty-four years ago 
came into the life of this nation upon this 
field, and it was just as inevitable and 
necessary as Waterloo. 

Our forefathers had set forth in the 
Declaration of Independence in 1776 that: 

"All men are created equal, that 
they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights, that 
among these are life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness." 

Fighting for the establishment of this 
principle the Revolutionists were successful 
and the nation was born. 

In 1 787, forgetting this principle of 
universal liberty, the founders and the peo- 
ple of this nation, while they declared in 
the Preamble to their Constitution that their 
purpose was to secure the "blessings of 

10 



liberty to ourselves and our posterity," rec- 
ognized and permitted the enslavement of 
human beings. 

The germ of disunion w^as in the 
organic law^ and the nation for three 
quarters of a century continued to oppose 
and thwart the eternal lavv^s of justice, the 
incorruptible and supreme equity, until 
Providence caused the righteous laws of 
freedom to prevail, and m the crisis of this 
field of battle eternal justice met, overcame 
and destroyed the evil principle of slavery 
so that the nation survived, pure and 
cleansed of its disease. 

The soldiers of the Union met the 

forces of disunion for almost two years on 

many battlefields and because the guiding 

minds of the nation were endeavoring to 

save the nation and at the same time save 

the favored institution of those who were 

in rebellion against the nation, God so pre- 

11 



vented the triumph of the Union arms that 
the cause of the Union was well nigh lost. 

Man in his weakness thought that this 
government, founded on the eternal princi- 
ple of freedom to all, could exist half free 
and half slave. 

But the Almighty, guiding the desrinies 
of the narion, frustrated the weak plans of 
man, and as the God of battles brought those 
entrusted with the narion's life to see that 
the narion could only survive wholly free. 
And so Abraham Lincoln, realizing that 
the rime had come to bow to the Supreme 
will — to that Divine power which had been 
so ordering the affairs of this nation that 
the crisis must come, issued the Emancipa- 
rion Proclamarion, declaring that all should 
be free. 

Then the narion took on new life, 
then her warriors, "thrice armed because 
they had their quarrel just," inspired by 



12 



their holy cause, that of union in which 
every man was free, fought on the side of 
eternal justice and supreme equity and be- 
came an invincible host. 

What inspired the four score and ten 
thousand men of the Union Army to meet 
in the dreadful shock of battle the hosts of 
disunion ? 

What inspired them to rush into the 
"imminent deadly breach?" What sustained 
them as they met the onrush of the enemy? 
What but that love of country that made 
it glorious to die, that love of liberty that 
made the patriot's grave his country's 
shrine ? 

And so there died upon this field 
of battle many thousand defenders of 
the Union — many thousand patriots — many 
thousand heroes, who offered up their 
lives a willing sacrifice that this country 
might be in fact, as in theory, wholly free. 

13 



The great victory was won. Eternal 
justice prevailed. Supreme equity reigned. 

Today we survey this field and see 
with clarified vision all that its tragedies 
meant. We see the Union saved, the 
nation established upon the immovable rock 
of freedom. 

The penalty for the transgression of the 
divine law of human liberty was paid by 
the nation as a whole because the whole 
nation was the transgressor. Victory and 
peace came only when it was certain that 
the preservation of the Union meant uni- 
versal freedom. Responsibility for the pri- 
mary causes of the nation's woes makes 
her whole people partners in the resultant 
griefs and glories. No loyal heart discrimi- 
nates today between the graves of those 
who died that the supreme equity of free- 
dom should prevail and no geographical 
lines circumscribe the gratitude of a nation 

14 



cleansed of its original sin by the blood of 
its devoted sons. 

Splendid and terrible were the con- 
comitants of the mighty struggle. They 
were fit accessories to the stupendous issues 
involved. 

The pomp, the glory and tragedy of 
war do not, however, environ every event- 
ful and critical period in a nation's history. 
Liberty and justice may survive or perish 
amidst the scenes of peace as well as those 
of war. Eternal vigilance to maintain a 
nation's institutions is quite as important 
and necessary as martial valor in establish- 
ing them upon firm foundations. 

It may seem at times that the over- 
throw of some particularly vicious manifes- 
tation of evil threatening the national life 
marks the ultimate victory. 

This is not true. The conflict never 
ends. It is going on now. We are in 



15 



the ranks and shadowy hosts and forces 
are contending all about us. On one side 
or the other of these bloodless battles all 
of us must be. We are either supinely 
submitting to, or courageously combatting, 
insidious assaults upon our national life. 
Armageddon is a present fight which will 
be waged until the end of this world and 
then will culminate. Athens and Greece 
won the glories of Salamis and Marathon 
and perished miserably and enslaved be- 
cause Hellenism no longer meant vigilance, 
patriotism and righteousness. 

It may be said with truth that for a 
nation the dangers of peace may be worse 
than the dangers of war and this is pecu- 
liarly true of our nation. 

Our governmental system has secured 
certain advantages which could not have 
been obtained without making it complex, 
and for that reason more liable to become 

16 



disarranged than are simple democracies 
and simple monarchies or autocracies. 

If we are to retain these advantages 
and prevent dangerous disarrangements of 
our plan we must jealously guard its dis- 
tinctive characteristics against the natural 
tendency towards their elimination and a 
reversion to the rejected but simpler types. 
The simplest form of government is absolute 
autocracy and it is the worst. All power 
is centred in one man, his will is the su- 
preme law, he rules with undisputed sway. 

Our governmental plan was constructed 
so as to resemble in a way the solar sys- 
tem where the finger of God spins the 
planets in perpetual harmony; but our sys- 
tem is the work of human wisdom and 
must depend upon human wisdom for its 
success. 

Sometimes a portion of the people 
strong by reason of their number or by 

17 



reason of their zeal and activity, and inter- 
ested in the accomplishment of laudable 
aims become impatient and restive under 
the checks and balances and boundaries 
which control and harmonize our system 
and may therefore oppose what they want 
through the methods they propose. 

Recently this tendency seems to me to 
have threatened seriously to disturb the just 
relations between the State and Federal 
governments. Impatient of the difficulties 
and delays which must attend the action of 
separate States in the accomplishment of 
their objects, some of the people have 
seemed to feel that by an assumption of 
Federal power, or by ignoring State power, 
their aims could be speedily and fully 
obtained. 

But the genius of our Constitution, the 
supreme equity of our form of government, 
the balance wheel of our system is that 

18 



each of the dual governments shall keep 
within its own sphere, untrammeled and 
uncontrolled by the other. 

Let us guard against dangerous en- 
croachments upon this system; let us stand 
courageously, persistently and eternally by 
our ancient rights. 

In this way shall we show our grati- 
tude to those who perished here and pre- 
serve the principles for which they died. 

If this Union is to survive it must be 
mamtamed as constituted or as modified 
in the way provided by those who consti- 
tuted it. 

If it is to survive it is just as necessary, 
now and always, that wisdom, vigilance 
and courage should abide in the halls of 
legislation, the chambers of judicial decis- 
ion, the centers of executive power and 
with the dominating mass of the people 
as that the sons of the Union should 

19 



have bathed with their blood these fertile 
fields. 

The strength and power of this Nation 
does not rest upon the fact that it is a 
federation of States, but that it is a Union 
of States, based upon a Constitution for- 
mulated by the people, adopted by the peo- 
ple, defended and preserved here by the 
people. No object is so important that we 
should sacrifice the very nature and glory 
of our system to accomplish it. 

It cost us nearly a million lives, untold 
millions of treasure and unspeakable anguish, 
to prevent the States from destroying the 
Union created by the Constitution. 

If unfortunately it should ever be nec- 
essary, it is not to be presumed that the 
people would not, at equal cost, prevent 
the Union from destroying the States. 
Such a crisis can only be avoided by the 
people themselves and by them only by 

20 



sternly rebuking and dismissing public serv- 
ants who through motives of cowardly ex- 
pediency, weakness of moral or mental 
fibre or other cause fail to stand coura- 
geously for the maintenance in their integ- 
rity of our essential rights. Wise men es- 
tablish governments ; brave men defend 
and die for them ; weak, corrupt and ambi- 
tious men destroy them. 

This Government is not seriously 
threatened by Anarchy, which is the 
cause espoused by the wicked, malicious 
and envious and by ignorance and per- 
verted degeneracy. 

Our peril is to be found in weak 
or insidious acquiescence by our public 
servants in specious demands for inroads 
upon the established and tried institutions 
of our country sometimes made in the 
name of reform, sometimes masquerading as 
justice. 

21 



The highest and most patriotic ambi- 
tion you and I can entertain is to seek to 
understand the fundamental principles in 
American National life and understanding 
them to defend and protect them. Defend 
them alike against those who would nar- 
rowly restrict them and those who would 
destructively expand them. 

The individual skirmisher out along the 
far-flung Union line beyond this crest served 
the cause as well as the commander of 
corps or army directing aggregate move- 
ments from headquarters. And often the 
private soldier has saved the day and re- 
trieved a disaster due to a commander's 
folly or perversity, dying an mconspicuous 
hero. In that spirit of vigilance and devo- 
tion, let us serve in this army of the 
Union, which is always in the field. We 
may not be able to make our service con- 
spicuous, we can certainly make it useful. 



22 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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